AOL vs. Microsoft in Desktop War?

loki29 was one of several people to submit this story at Betanews based on a supposedly leaked memo. Even if the memo is fake, the strategies outlined seem quite real and accurate - AOL/Time-Warner most assuredly is worried about Microsoft usurping their role in the "online experience" by presenting Windows XP users with lots of defaults set to "Use .NET".

Comments

Re:Battlegrounds

[Dwonis]

Heheh.

Red Hat: Millions of AOL users can't be wrong.
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I'm a C++ guru ... What's STL?

Re:"stall" is the operative word

[rkent]

message to AOL members and the public that XP is "not ready" for broad adoption (i.e., has bugs, ...

Yeah, tell people Windows has bugs. That's always stopped them from buying it in the past.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Alternate link for info

[Alien54]

This was reported in The Register on Saturday morning. The article there is good, and has all of the juicy bits of the story.

Which is nice if Beta News gets Slashed. (all your hits are belong to us!)

Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

Battlegrounds

[SlashGeek]

I realize that this "memo" is most likely fake. However, it really made me think; although the memo may be fake, the mentality behind it may not be so far from the truth. What truely bothers me is that, with so much at stake, to what lengths will AOL/M$ go to win? And, where will the battle be fought? My guess is that most of it will be fought on the desktop of every AOL/XP user in the world. For those who have ever had the unfortionate privledge of installing AOL, you are all but forced to install Realplayer, Flash players, and all kinds of other crap that you may not want. And if you're not careful about reading all of the "Ok" boxes and check boxes, you will end up with AOL as the default for just about everything except picking your nose. What I'm getting at is will AOL/M$ be batteling it out on users machines for control, and how much control over their own machines will users loose in the process? This doesn't seem very fair to the end user, who's desktop will ultimately become the battleground for corperate power.

Re:Who says this is lying?

[mrmag00]

1) Crack the server market

Seems to me the IIS server market has been cracked quite successfully... *sigh*

Re:A chilling read...

[squiggleslash]

This assumes that AOL could completely stall XP, rather than reduce its marketshare and allow an opportunity for alternatives to blossom.

I think probably the best thing AOL could do, if they waged an all-out campaign against XP at a time when Microsoft are pushing XP exclusively (remember, the current marketing plan has XP replacing both the NT and DOS series') is open an opportunity for PC manufacturers to ship PCs with operating systems other than Windows, and to do so in response to genuine customer demand. "You mean I can't use my AOL account with XP? Well, give me a PC with Linux", that kind of thing.

This requires AOL gets its house in order though and get their Linux, etc, clients working.

Right now AOL is probably the only company with the wieght to effect Microsoft's ability to make XP a complete success. Personally, partially because XP is probably the slimiest product MS have ever released, but mostly because when I go into a computer shop, I want to see a choice of platforms and choice of different computers to be standard, not frowned upon, I hope they succeed.

(None of this should be construed as meaning I either believe or disbelieve the memo this article is about)
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"stall" is the operative word

[hyrdra]

"6) Stall XP Adoption: Until AOL can develop an appropriate XP solution, message to AOL members and the public that XP is "not ready" for broad adoption (i.e., has bugs, will not run AOL, will not run your existing software, will violate your online privacy, etc...)"

I especially like this one. Lying to consumers to get your product forwarded. I could just see a big Steve Case "Member Community Outreach" regarding the severe online privacy violations with XP, just after AOL parades you with ten sign-on ads and collects data on your web browsing (AOL "proxy") while moderating everything to hell.

Everyone seems to think Microsoft is the worst corporate technology firm with devilish, underhanded practices, but this is just outrageous.